The subject matter presented herein generally relates to preventing damage to components of electronic devices. More specifically, the subject matter presented herein relates to protection of hard drives.
Electronic devices are relatively sensitive to sudden impacts, such as a result of the device being inadvertently dropped onto the floor by a user. Such impacts can cause damage to the components of the device, including components of a hard disk drive (HDD) assembly. Such damage can result from the impact because a head may not be parked, that is away from a platter of the HDD, when the impact occurs. This can lead to the head “slapping” the platter of the HDD, causing damage as a result of the impact.
Certain adaptive solutions have been implemented as mechanisms for dealing with such sudden or unexpected impacts. For example, an existing solution includes an integrated motion sensor that monitors the movement of a notebook computer, and, responsive to a detection of a sudden change in acceleration, correlated with an impending impact, temporarily stops the HDD to protect it. Thus, such acceleration-based solutions can detect sudden changes in acceleration and temporarily stop the HDD to help protect valuable data from some impacts that occur.